The present invention relates to a wire harness fitted to a car, or the like and a wire harness attaching method and, more particularly, a wire harness that can be installed even when front and back faces of the wire harness are reversed and can reduce a cord providing space and a wire harness attaching method.
The progress in a car, a copying machine, a ticket machine, etc. equipped with electronic equipments has been notable in recent years. The wire harness is employed as the wiring system to transfer information and energy that are indispensable for these equipments.
For example, several hundreds of high-performance electric wires are needed to operate precisely an engine, meters, lights, etc. of the car. The wire harness is employed to tie up such electric wires and information circuits compactly in a bundle.
As the wire harness, normally there are the flat type in which core electric wires as conductors are aligned like a flat surface and the bundle type constituting a group of electric wires.
Since the flat-type wire harness has a small thickness, such wire harness has advantages that it does not occupy much space, it makes the cord provision simple, and the like. Also, since the specification of the core electric wires is different according to the applied portion, the wire harnesses that fit in with the applied portions are often employed in a laminated fashion (see JP-UM-A-6-64324, for example).
In JP-UM-A-6-64324, the flat harness and the flat harness fixing structure have a structure shown in FIG. 11 and FIG. 12 respectively.
More particularly, as shown in FIG. 11, a flat harness 50 is formed by putting opposing surfaces of a conductive material 51, which continues in one direction, between insulating films 52. A laminated fabric 54 is adhered onto outer surfaces of the insulating films 52 via an adhesive agent 53 respectively. Also, female engagement portions 55 are implanted on the laminated fabric 54 on one side, and male engagement portions 56 are implanted on the laminated fabric 54 on the other side.
In attaching the flat harnesses 50 having the above structure, as shown in FIG. 12, two sheets of flat harnesses 50A, 50B are laminated in such a way that the male engagement portions 56 on the second flat harness 50B are engaged with the female engagement portions 55 on the first flat harness 50A respectively. Then, three sheets of flat harnesses 50A, 50B, 50C are laminated such that the male engagement portions 56 on the third flat harness 50C are engaged with the female engagement portions 55 on the second flat harness 50B respectively.
However, in the flat harness laminated structure in JP-UM-A-6-64324, the problems described in the following exist. First, in this flat harness laminated structure in JP-UM-A-6-64324, the female engagement portions 55 and the male engagement portions 56 are provided to the surface of the flat harness 50 on one side and the surface on the other side respectively. Therefore, the female engagement portions 55 and the male engagement portions 56 on the flat harnesses 50A, 50B must be engaged to oppose mutually in attaching the flat harnesses 50A, 50B, etc. Accordingly, there is the problem that respective directions of the flat harnesses 50A, 50B are determined and thus the flat harnesses 50A, 50B cannot be used in a reversed mode of their front and back surfaces.
Consequently, for example, when the worker holds the flat harness 50 to be laminated in his or her hand and then engages it with the first flat harness 50A, first such worker must check which one of the female engagement portions 55 and the male engagement portions 56 appears on the surface of the first flat harness 50A, and then the worker must check the type of fibres on the flat harness 50 in his or her hand to correspond to the appeared female engagement portions 55 or male engagement portions 56.
Normally the flat harnesses to be laminated are orderly managed such that the worker can conduct effectively the attaching operation as it is when he or she holds the flat harness in his or her hand, nevertheless for some reason the flat harness is placed in its reversed state. The worker assumes that the flat harness can be laminated immediately and pushes the flat harness in his or her hand against the opposing flat harness, but the female engagement portions 55 and the male engagement portions 56 do not meet face to face. Therefore, the worker must turn the flat harness in his or her hand upside down and then push it once again, so that such attaching operation takes a lot of time and effort.
Also, the flat wire harness is constructed by attaching sequentially the insulating film 52, the adhesive agent 53, the laminated fabric 54, and the female engagement portions 55 or the male engagement portions 56 on the front and back surfaces of the conductive material 51 respectively, and the overall structure is constructed like a flat plate. Therefore, in case such laminated flat harnesses 50 are fitted the body of the car, or the like, a cord providing space having a thickness equivalent to the number of laminated sheets is needed. Supposing that a number of flat harnesses are laminated by using the laminated structure in JP-UM-A-6-64324, such thickness occupies a space on the interior side correspondingly to narrower an interior space.